Motion
by concretya
Summary: Even Magneto doesn't recognize how utterly John Allerdyce has been in control of his own destiny, and how determined he is to stay that way. Not a nice Pyro.


Pyro sat in a slump, knees drawn up, elbows carelessly rested upon them, fingers almost interlocked. He didn't fiddle around with his lighter any more, because he didn't carry it on him. Instead shot fire out of one wrist jet, curved it along his fingers and into the other one, then out and around again, back and forth, back and forth. Like playing ping-pong with himself. Just as he had used to play ping-pong with Bobby, once in a blue moon.

Bobby had seemed startled by Pyro's attack that day. Well, he would be; Bobby still believed in the inner goodness of everyone, especially old friends. Hadn't Pyro's strong language warned him? Even as he made those comments to Iceman, John had been aware that he was going far, too far, overboard even for him- but once he started he couldn't stop, and the sneer about Rogue had slipped out. Surely some part of him had been doing it intentionally to make Bobby fight him, to end it all already. But Bobby hadn't, so John had to let his anger out by fulfilling his mission. And now, lying against a tree in the forest camp of the Brotherhood, he could again see Bobby's stricken face as he watched the bead of fire go back and forth, back and forth.

Magneto was the first person to approach him as he sat brooding. Well, not merely first, but _only_. Mystique may have drawn close for a friendly insult, but no, she was gone. Magneto had left her. Magneto may have made speeches and insinuations that Mystique _went_, went by becoming human again, but Pyro had seen her. She had not strayed from her path, but Magneto had left her behind.

And the other mutants did not like to approach him. Those who had been with Magneto long before Pyro had still viewed him as an outsider, one of the others, a kid playing with something too dangerous for him. The new recruits knew only that Pyro was Magneto's closest shadow since Mystique was gone; and the group from the church largely stuck to themselves. Pyro grinned cynically when he dwelt on this; students at Xavier's had done this, too. More subtly, of course; they were better at hiding it. Inviting Bobby to a party in a hushed voice so that the crazy Allerdyce kid wouldn't hear, sharing disgruntled looks with their friends when a professor assigned John as their partner for a project. John liked being with Bobby or Rogue, and only them.

We're a place you can find acceptance, they said, and to the rich and content, the happy families, they showed brochures of children playing together. But John had not seen those brochures until after he was settled in Xavier's, and knew the truth. They were teenagers; how could they be any different than those in John's home town? Instead they made excuses for themselves, saying that they _did _accept him, that instead _he _pushed _them_ away. Made himself inaccessible, except to Bobby and Rogue. Irritated them on purpose by flicking "that stupid lighter" during movies.

Well, he didn't have the lighter any more, and still Magneto was the only one to draw close.

"You know, Pyro," he said in his rich old man's voice, speaking slowly as if every word held deep significant value, even dull matter such as this. "Forcing fire the wrong way through your lighters can't be good for them. I would hate for you to break something so new and… valuable."

Pyro stopped the circling of the fire, and let his fingers knit more closely together, but said nothing.

"I do hope this current mood you're in is triggered by your own tirelessly brooding nature, Pyro, and not any recent events." Magneto paused, and looked piercingly at the younger man. "Or, if it is, that at least you have some justification and you are not just making mountains out of molehills."

Pyro hesitated for a moment before replying in his most neutral tone, "Iceman was at the clinic. Looking for Rogue."

"Has she decided to take the cure, then?" Magneto asked, and for a moment his focus was taken off of John, into the depths of his own mind. John shifted, and Magneto returned his attention. "She is weak, Pyro, and straying even further from the path than she has been."

"I think Bo- Iceman was trying to stop her." Of course, Bobby would probably just give her a speech about how much he loved her, how she needed to consider it, and he was sure the professors at Xavier's school would accept her decision but could she please not make _that _decision? And then if it didn't work, Bobby would take all the responsibility for it onto his own shoulder, obsessing over Rogue, making sure she was fine, making sure nobody so much as mentioned it to her, defending her before she had even been attacked.

John, now, he would have demanded that she not even go in the first place.

Except… he was thinking of them as friends again. Doubtless if he had tried to stop her, it would only have encouraged her even more, because obviously Pyro, so in love with his power, would say that, and did she really want to be like him?

Magneto scrutinized him, and Pyro was very glad that this was not Xavier with his mind-reading skills, though sometimes it felt so. "Remember, Pyro," Magneto said softly, "she chose to turn herself away from us, from all mutants. We are the path to a greater destiny, and your old friends chose to depart from it." And he was off, into the crowd.

Pyro believed in the path to the greater destiny, truly he did. He had become his power, his own gateway. But Bobby, departing from the predetermined path? That image would not sit right in his mind. Bobby Drake was not one to rebel, not one to start the ball rolling. Hell, he wouldn't even start a fight today, though John knew his old friend had been just itching to. It was Pyro who turned away from the rules purposefully.

A teacher at the school had spoken harshly to him when he and Bobby were both in trouble, once. Cyclops had told John that John was being willfully disobedient, and leading Bobby with him. It was the one time in John's life he had been considered a leader, not a loner or follower, and he knew Cyclops, through those stupid rose-colored goggles, viewed this as a bad thing. Thought John should not lead, should not deserve to venture off into his own path.

It was the one thing Pyro would have to disagree with Magneto on. Xavier might have though John Allerdyce was misguided, and Magneto might have thought Pyro was remaining true to the ultimate cause, but Cyclops was right. The other students at the school were right. Bobby and Rogue were right when they remained and let him leave the shuttle at Alkali Lake.

Pyro had made a conscious decision. Pyro had rebelled.

Pyro was the one who put himself in motion.

Objects in motion tended to stay in motion, and Pyro was not one run out of his own steam. He had actively started this, and he would actively finish it.

Absently he began shooting fire at leaves on the tree above him. He watched each leaf shrivel, then turn to ash, and he stopped each flame before it reached the rest of the branch. On each one, he imagined the face of someone who had held him back, denied that he had it in him. Someone who punished him for acting, refused to respond to his action. Bobby. Rogue. Storm. Cyclops. Xavier. Magneto. Bobby.

Pyro was the one with initiative, and he would not let that go. He was proud of it; it was his fire.


End file.
